Forms

ITECS provides a PHP-based application called engrForm to collect and store information through the web. This service provides the same capabilities as the University's inFORM application for users on College of Engineering web servers.

Engrform can be used by developers to build accessible forms for their web sites. Engrform is compatible with InFORM and can produce multi-page forms that support email, spreadsheet, and text-file collection methods.

Currently the form scripts support the collection methods provided by inForm: Text File, Spread Sheet, and E-mail. Eventually the form scripts will also support MySQL and XML file storage. The scripts can run in an inForm compatibility mode, reducing the amount of changes needed to get inForm pages working with engrForm. The web scripts include virtually all inForm features.

In addition, engrForm can be used to create multi-page forms and can optionally generate a confirmation page for users to see their submission before it is stored. It can apply a template to plain HTML form pages and apply the same template to automatically generated pages, such as the confirmation page and error messages.

For advanced users, the form scripts can be used to create branching logic forms which react to user input by presenting different pages. It is also possible to write error checking and pre-processing filters for your forms that intercept and manipulate data before the scripts process it.